eaders may be interested in a very recent review of Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths
about Cures, Theories, and Inventions ‘They’ Declared Impossible. Kathleen Marden and I
each wrote seven chapters. The review by John
Harney can be seen at The Magonia Blog.
Harney isn’t bothered by the chapters on aviation, space, cold fusion, climate change,
communications, Jupiter and man, various medical situations, etc. He is bothered by the ones
dealing with frontier and paranormal phenomena, the Abduction conundrum, and of course,
UFOs.

Harney says “Friedman launches his familiar attacks on the ‘debunkers’; though he devotes too
much space to those who know little about the subject and have never carried out serous
investigations and whose opinions are thus hardly worth commenting on.” I wonder who he means
sounds like the debunkers…. I focused on the research of Dr. James E. McDonald, associate
director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (most UFOs are indeed seen in the
atmosphere) and a full professor of Physics at the University of Arizona. Jim interviewed
over 500 witnesses, lectured to many professional groups and provided a 71-page paper
concerning 41 cases he had examined to Congressional Hearings in 1968 (see books, etc.).
Another focus was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, head of the astronomy department at Northwestern
University and for more than 20 years consultant to the Air Force Project Blue Book. He
investigated many sightings as reported, for example, in his book The UFO Experience. I
also noted the outstanding work of Ted Phillips, who has collected literally thousands of
physical trace cases from more than 80 countries and visited many hundreds of sites. Perhaps
Harney is referring to Dr. Carl Sagan whom I did criticize and who has indeed never done any
serious investigations? Harney falsely claims that I said “The reason why we don’t have
definitive proof of UFO reality is government secrecy.” He fails to address the obvious
question which is “How can governments keep secret for over 60 years something over which
they have no control?” Harney should obviously realize that governments don’t need to control
the aliens. They definitely do control the sophisticated devices for monitoring and tracking
UFOs and examining UFO wreckage from events such as Roswell, and the dissemination of that
data, which is born classified. These include ground, air, and space radar systems, radar and
cameras on board aircraft chasing UFOs, and on board ships at sea. During WW2 governments
made sure that no word was spread about Japanese Fugo Balloon bombs which they also didn’t
control.

My co-author, Kathleen Marden, has commented about Harney’s uninformed views about her
chapters.

I was somewhat dismayed but not surprised by “The Magonia Blog’s” review of our new book,
Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths About Cures, Theories, and Inventions “They” Declared
Impossible. Magonia’s reviewer, John Harney, delivered a fairly
accurate assessment of our book’s subject matter “how scientific and technological progress
has been retarded by authoritative persons who have declared innovations and inventions be
either wrong or of no practical use.” He then mentions some of our more controversial
chapters — global warming, parapsychology and UFOs. The scientific evidence for the latter are
discussed in a section titled “Frontiers of Science.” He should have mentioned that our book
is divided into five sections: Aerospace, Technology, Medicine, Politics, and the Frontiers
of Science.

He claims that “The authors favour the genuineness of psychic phenomena, as one would
expect.” as if the information presented were based upon emotionality rather than statistical
evidence. But he fails to inform the reader of my (Kathleen’s) extensive research of tightly
controlled experimental studies, designed by parapsychologists and skeptics working together,
that indicate there is reproducible scientific evidence in support of psi phenomena in
thousands of telepathy experiments. He also avoids mentioning the failure of academia to
accept the results due to personal bias and the National Research Council of the National
Academy of Science’s call for “a fairer hearing across a broader spectrum of the scientific
community so that emotionality does not impede the object assessment of experimental
results.” This came after a Harvard University professor was asked by the committee to
withhold information favorable to psi.

Harney fails to mention that my chapter (Kathleen’s) on alien abduction discusses the
infamous “Trick Memo” written at the project’s inception in 1966 by Robert Low, the Condon
Committee’s project coordinator , that clearly voices the biased opinion that “In order to
undertake such a project, one would have to approach it objectively. That is, one has to
admit the possibility that such things as UFOs exist. It is not respectable to give serious
consideration to such a possibility… The very act of admitting these possibilities just as
possibilities put us beyond the pale… I can quite easily imagine, however, that
psychologists, sociologists and psychiatrists might well generate scholarly publications as a
result of their investigations of saucer observers.” Nor does he mention the fact that
Section 7 of the National Academy of Science’s review report recommended that “UFO reports
should be of interest to social scientists.”

He does claim however, that I “attack the work of psychologists who attribute such
(abduction) reports to the effects of sleep paralysis.” Attack is an extremely strong word to
describe my discussion of the characteristics of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic/hypnopompic
hallucinations. There is no “attack” on psychologists who favor the sleep paralysis
hypothesis. In fact, I don’t even mention names — only the statement that some experiencers do
not have the classic symptoms of sleep paralysis (waking up paralyzed and able to move only
one’s eyes). Instead, they cry out, attempt to flee, or throw things at their captors prior
to the onset of paralysis. I also stated that some wake up locked out of their homes, on
their roofs, in someone else’s home or in their vehicles. On page 205 I wrote, “A full 30
percent of abductees recall the entire experience without hypnosis, and do not fit nicely
into the sleep anomaly or fantasy-prone personality group.” Does this presentation of
research findings sound like an attack? Certainly debunkers must shutter when they hear this
information. He further alleges that my “dismissive attitude is hardly scientific.”
Actually, my attitude is not dismissive. I clearly state that some individuals believe they
have been abducted by aliens, for a variety of psychological reasons, when they have not. I
also present evidence that some psychological hypotheses don’t hold water and some
psychological studies appear to be biased. Harney’s problem is that I don’t dismiss all UFO
abductions.

My chapter actually focuses upon the results of academic psychology studies of suspected
or self identified abductees that might explain alien abduction and the surprising results of
studies conducted in the US and Canada. I then present the evidence that some alien
abductions are real.

Harney lambasts me for my paragraph on the work of Derrel Sims and Roger Leir on alleged
alien implants. I suppose he is distressed that I wrote about the medical finding that
tissue surrounding the implants exhibits no signs of inflammatory response, and a large
number of specialized nerve cells within the tissue samples had no anatomical reason to be
there. Horrors! Even worse, I mentioned Leir’s report that one suspected implant emitted a
radio frequency that would broadcast in a deep-space frequency, and that one of Leir’s
specimens showed trace element patterns and isotopic ratios consistent with meteoric origin
(see my footnotes). Harney summarily dismisses these scientific findings with the statement
that “they have never presented any evidence that there is anything exotic about any of
these.” You decide.

It is clear that Harney objected to my overview of the research findings on both sides of the
debate and would have preferred a narrow discussion in support of psychological hypotheses.
However, the chapter’s title is “The Conundrum of Alien Abduction.” The American Heritage
Dictionary defines conundrum as “a problem admitting of no satisfactory solution; A difficult
and complicated problem.” Both sides of the issue deserve discussion.